


Empathy is a Curse

by kunstvogel



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 13:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15097592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kunstvogel/pseuds/kunstvogel
Summary: Musings on the life of Will Graham.





	1. Graduation

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old series I abandoned, but I thought it was worth posting again.

_1995_

 

The ceremony had gone by slowly, Will’s young body stiff from standing at attention the entire time. He was mildly relieved when it was over, the new badge in his gloved grasp and a quiet sense of pride in his heart. His father grinned and clapped a congratulatory hand over Will’s shoulder, and the younger drove his father home.

At nineteen years old Will had attended and graduated from the New Orleans police academy, with no issues along the way. Needless to say, he was content.

Times like those had been enjoyed in silence, both knowing the others’ feelings well enough to communicate without speech.

Will dropped his father off at the airport and drove to his own home in New Orleans, a small apartment in a bustling neighborhood. The noise and emotions around him often kept Will awake, so he made an effort to keep himself busy all day and come home too exhausted to take note of anything going on around him.

The habit was unhealthy, but effective.

After taking a shower, he gathered the blue and black uniform up from the bathroom, hanging it up next to his laundry basket to wash it later. Years later, that very uniform would still be hung in the back of his closet, enclosed in a protective plastic cover. He placed the badge on his side table. (Later, it would rest in its black velvet box, somewhere on his bookshelves.)

Dreams occupied his slumber, the nightmares still a rarity.


	2. Some Things Never Change

“I’m going to Florida,” Will said.

“So you’re retiring, then?” Jack asked. He didn’t look surprised.

“Yeah. Need to get away from all of this. All of...him.” He gestured at empty air, but they both knew what he meant. Hannibal still hung in the air, somehow. Will sometimes still felt that he was standing next to him, that they were still playing with words and thoughts and feelings like knives.

Jack nodded, solemn and understanding. He eyed the small streak of grey that had appeared in Will’s hair. “Just don’t stand on rooftops anymore. People get the wrong idea,” he chuckled.

Will cracked a weak smile. “I won’t,” he promised. A gust of wind blew in through the hospital window, and Jack got up to leave. Will knew this wouldn’t be the last time they saw one another, but he said good-bye anyway and found it in him to send a big smile in Jack’s direction.

* * *

When Will had recovered enough to talk to visitors for more than five minutes at a time, his father visited. Thomas Graham had, of course, visited his son whenever possible, and had actually made it when Will was first stabbed in his cop years, and later when he had been (wrongfully) institutionalized at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He’d also been at the trial, but nobody in the room was told who he was.

The man was 63 by now; Will being 39. His jaw-length, curly hair was grey with a few strands that remained chocolate brown, and a short beard covered his jaw, his moustache thick over his lips. It was obvious, if you looked at his face, where Will’s looks came from. The only difference was that the elder had freckles on his face and had no glasses.

Sitting in the chair next to Will’s bed, his expression pained, he looked over the machines Will was hooked up to, the hand he unconsciously held against his belly. “I’ve seen you in the hospital before, but…” He trailed off, unsure of how to express his feelings. “Your _therapist_ did that to you?”

“Yes,” Will replied, a sardonic grin on his lips. “I gave therapy one shot. One. Look what happened to me. Never seeing another one of ‘em.” With his father Will was more comfortable socially, picking up on his speech patterns but not mimicking them, as he usually would. His own half-buried Southern accent came out too, and his father laughed.

“There it is,” he said. “The “twang,” as your mother described it.”

“Oh god, Dad, she hates it,” Will said, grinning. “She always did.”

“Yeah. Not like she was any better though, with that New York accent of hers. Oooh, boy. Talk about hypocrisy. Too bad she’s not here to listen to this conversation.”

“She’s still refusing to see me?”

“Yup. Says you should’ve stayed at that institution, even if you didn’t kill nobody. Says you’re dangerous and ought to be taught a thing or two about her little lifestyle.”

Will frowned, a little discouraged by the comments. He _had_ actually killed two people, though he didn’t say it. Garrett Jacob Hobbs’s death had been legal, Randall Tier’s close enough to legal to pass. Self defense. “I never really knew her,” he admitted. “She wasn’t around me much when you two were married.”

“I know. She did that on purpose. Didn’t like you ‘cause you were too much like me. She wanted a carbon copy of her. Turns out it worked the other way around.” Will smiled at that.

“I still fit in your clothes,” he commented, and Thomas nodded.

“Always have,” he agreed. “It’s kind of funny how alike we are.”

“You know, I don’t think we’ve ever talked this much before. It’s usually just...silent, between us.” Will could say why it was that way, but he chose not to. He could see it in his father’s eyes.

There had been too much going on for them to comfortably have a conversation.

* * *

When Will was three years old, Thomas began to teach him how to fish. By this point, his mother had given up on trying to get them to dress to her standards, and generally did not take the two with her when she went to events or meetings. Will was given his father’s old clothes along with some clothing they had gotten from friends, and his wardrobe mainly consisted of henley shirts, corduroy overalls, jeans, and one pair of beaten old boat shoes. His fishing gear was the same that Thomas had worn/used at his age.

If, say, Jack or Alana were to see a picture of Thomas and Will when he was a child, they might mistake it for a picture of Will with a younger boy, or perhaps his son - if he had one. (However, he did not.) The two were about as close as was possible for them; both being distant and quiet people.

The one definite difference was Will’s empathy disorder, and his Asperger’s. Thomas’s father, Samuel Graham, had had Asperger’s Syndrome, but since he was mostly able to overcome it before Thomas was born, nobody in the family really knew how to handle it. The empathy disorder, though, was unique entirely to Will.

Both had first been noticed in his school years. The kindergarten teacher saw how he often mimicked other children in speech patterns and physical behavior, and how he could relate to someone else’s feelings, imitate them, but not understand them or know how he himself felt.

However, he lacked any problematic sensory issues and did not throw fits of any kind often, so he was not put into a separate class, but was monitored by teachers and had a guidance counsellor. His parents divorced when he was five, and he never saw his mother again. There was no noticeable difference in his behavior, only the changes at home as his father had to work harder and more often to pay for their apartment.

Not long afterwards, they were forced to move into a trailer home.

Throughout Will’s elementary and grade school years, he and his father moved from places in Louisiana and Mississippi, and stayed in Biloxi the longest. In school, Will grew frustrated with his empathy disorder, unable to stop feeling what everyone else was feeling. He had more difficulty than ever discerning his own emotions from the others, and began to find himself recreating scenes of various recent events in his head just by being in the area it happened.

By the beginning of his high school years, Thomas found a full-time job near New Orleans, and they stayed there until Will graduated, having settled on a police job. He’d taken all of the classes - psychology, police sciences, forensics, firearm science, ect. and was recognized as an outstanding student. The teachers gave him numerous recommendations.

Actually doing the work was an entirely different thing, though, and his empathy disorder only made it more difficult.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Jack approached Will’s house slowly, the A/C in his car on full blast. He noticed that there were only three dogs in the yard, and Will’s station wagon sat alone beside the house. Stepping out into the humid Florida weather, he shed his coat reluctantly and rolled up his shirt sleeves.

He caught the dogs’ attention, and they hobbled over, panting and sniffing. They were old now, nearly twelve years having passed since Will had first rescued them. After each received a head scratch they lost interest and laid in the shade near the porch.

Will wasn’t how Jack remembered him. He sat in a rocking chair on the porch, a glass of whiskey in his fist as his free hand scratched Winston’s head absently. His hair was completely white now; short and unbrushed. Jack knew it was mostly because of stress rather than age that his features were so worn; face pale and sallow, his back curved. The scars on his face stood out pink and white against his skin, healed but still angry in appearance.

“Hey, Jack,” Will greeted, voice barely a gruff whisper. Glassy and bloodshot eyes gazed up at the elder, not reflecting the soft smile on his face.

“Will,” Jack responded, taking a seat next to the younger man. “How have you been?”

“My...my father. He passed away a week ago. Died in his sleep.” Will sniffed, taking a drink. His speech was slurred, but comprehensible.

“I’m sorry,” Jack offered. Will waved a dismissive hand.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Died at 74, pretty good age for the old man. He didn’t feel anything.”

“Are you holding up okay?” Jack asked, sympathetic. Will didn’t answer, talking to Winston softly as he scratched the dog’s ears.

“Molly- Molly, she left,” he said a moment later, taking another drink at the approaching topic. “Was worried that I would be a, uh, bad influence. Among other things. I wasn’t talking to her-and. She couldn’t look at me. My- my face.”

“I saw her car was gone, but...isn’t this her house?” Jack questioned.

“She left me the house. And- uh, anything else I wanted to keep that wasn’t totally hers. No divorce, either. Just separation.” Will scratched the nape of his neck nervously, glancing at the floorboards. “I thought it was a little odd, but hey. <i>I’m</i> a little odd.”

“That’s true. You’re not like most people, Will.”

“There’s always been a lot of talk about me...hasn’t changed, huh?”

Jack cringed. “Thought not,” Will muttered.

“They have a lot to say about your...current lifestyle.”

“I’m sure they do. Yeah, this is how people like us end up. Called a hero for a day, a freak forever after. Guess some heroes don’t get happy endings.” Will chuckled.

“Real heroes are survivors,” Jack added. “Survivors are unpredictable - and therefore a threat.”

Will nodded, his expression drawn. He didn’t say anything else, though.

 


End file.
